The following excerpts are from my address to the honorees at the Oberlin High School Academic Banquet, May 20, 1998. For the full text, e-mail your request to me at jrand@ix.netcom.com.

This coming September will be the first September in forty-six of my years that I will not have returned to school; amazingly, thirty of those years have been spent in this very place, OHS. During my years here, according to my probably conservative calculations, I have taught over 3300 students in 150 different classes; I have graded in the vicinity of 30,000 compositions and at least half that many more tests and quizzes, none of this counting the hundreds of journals that have passed over my desk in more recent years or the thirty-five hundred pages for the twenty-three yearbooks that I have advised during most of my years here. Now you know why I wear bifocals and why, unlike Mr. Jaffee, who teaches math, Mr. Randall, who teaches English, cannot stick around forever. Just one more semester of grading papers, and I fear I would need a seeing eye dog to get me home!

.....But I also wanted to personally and publicly thank you for making my teaching career so special. I have few regrets as I look back over my thirty years here. On balance I take pride in the way that I have conducted my classes and in the level of instruction that my students have received. And I value more than you will ever know the time I spent with so many interesting and different people, most of you among them. And what kept me coming back year after year, more than anything else, was the likes of you: students who not only meet us teachers more than halfway during our time together in the classroom each day but who also give of your time and effort in dozens of extra-curricular activities to make this school community what it is.

In closing, I'd like to draw your attention once again to the backdrop for what I have just shared. All three of these quotes, you'll remember, have to do with time. You've probably heard this a thousand times before, but it needs to be stated yet again, this time, this evening from someone who this spring more than at any other time of his life realizes the reality of this simple, universal truth: time flies. Period. Whether or not you're having a good time, it flies. Before you know it, my friends, your high school days will be far behind you. And before you even have time to blink, it will seem, much of your life will be a series of memories. In light of this reality, I leave you this evening with this challenge: Savor the time you have, especially time with family and friends. And yes, savor the time you have alone, with yourself. And to those of you of faith, savor time--quality and conscious time--with your creator.

"Time is but the stream I go a fishing in," said Henry David Thoreau nearly a century and a half ago. And I, this evening, challenge you to cast your line both far and deep.

"The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time," said Sweet Baby James Taylor some twenty years ago. I hope that you can say the same thing as well, both this evening and, say, thirty years hence.

And finally, "But at my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near." That from an English seventeenth century metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell. In other words, he is saying, time is forever at your back and always gaining on you.

And so, my young honorees, trust me. Before you know it, more time than you realize will have passed. Use it and even abuse it wisely. And thank you so very much for your part in helping me to enjoy the passing of my time here at Oberlin High School these past three decades. It has been a good run. God bless you.